Jockey Angle with Paddy Flood: A Costly Error - 'It takes the scope out of the horse' On this week's episode of ‘The Jockey Angle’, brought to you by William Hill, Paddy Flood analyses the bumper from Gowran, a costly error by Cian Quirke which ends in a fall for horse and rider and Witches Familiar who looks like a serious mare for the future. Race replays are FREE to watch from all Irish tracks and a selection of premier British tracks sponsored by William Hill. Paddy Flood’s Video An unfortunate faller, lucky enough, horse and rider are all okay. The horse we're going to be focusing on is in the red colors and that is Ebony King. Cian is giving this horse a grand ride. This is the third last going in. Tricky enough hurdle. He wasn't that good at it. So, to me now, Cian probably lost half a length there. And he did the right thing, he tucked back in. I suppose when a horse has jumped that third last like that, you start maybe mentally getting a little bit worried thinking, "Oh, are you going to be okay when we actually do quicken?" And these do really quicken. They're doing 37 miles an hour down to the second last again. Jumps it well, but doesn't fill you with enthusiasm jumping it, gets a little bit high and a little bit flat. Watch the full analysis Jack Kennedy on El Cairos obviously is one of the top top riders in Ireland, Europe or in the world really. Cian Quirk is a young man making his way up. I’ve been very, very impressed with him, with all his rides. But, I'm just going to highlight something that I think he could have done differently and why the horse fell. So if you watch Jack, Jack Kennedy's body language and Cian's are basically the same. They're both over the horses wither. They're getting the horse down to stretch to a hurdle which is perfectly the right thing to do. But, now let's just keep an eye on Cian Quirk. Watch Jack get in underneath his horse. Watch Jack's elbows. You don't see them rising. You see Jack's bum gets into the saddle. And doing that, he lets that horse know that he wants him to come down and flick the top and be as fast as he can. What Cian does is, and I'm going to call this a hopeful hoof, basically, right? Cian has gone down to it doing everything right, but the last three strides, what Cian does is he disconnects completely from the horse. Cian’s arse is nearly behind the saddle. That's putting all the weight on the back of the horse. And then what Cian does is he lifts his two hands off the wither. He's disconnected from the mouth as well and he punches down on the horse's neck. He's hoofing him. When you hoof a horse, your weight goes right back on them and your hands kind of come up off the wither. The horse’s power comes from behind the saddle when you need him to get down low, slick and jump through the hurdle. It goes the opposite way when you hoof a horse. The horse to be fair to him has tried, he's tried absolutely everything to get over the hurdle. I think the fact that Cian’s weight had shifted so far back and he's pushing down into the horse's shoulder and wither, it takes the scope out of the horse. I'm not being hyper critical on the chap. We've all done it. He came out and gave a horse in the chase then two or three races later an absolute cracking ride and he's a lovely rider. I just think that's why the horse fell and I think he would have won too. I feel like he just went, "If I get over this, I'm going to win." I'm sure Cian will watch that himself and say, "Yeah, that's what I did wrong and it won't happen again."
